HM Revenue and Customs first permanent secretary Sir Jim Harra has announced that he will step down from the role and retire from the civil service in the spring.
Harra's decision comes almost exactly five years since he replaced predecessor Sir Jon Thompson on an interim basis – a move that was made permanent at the end of October 2019.
Harra made his announcement on the LinkedIn social network and posted a link to HMRC's advertisement for his successor at the tax-collection agency.
"If you have the right skills and experience, please consider applying," he wrote. "It's a fascinating and rewarding role with national impact, for candidates of the right calibre."
Harra began his career as a tax inspector at the Inland Revenue in 1984, just over two decades before the department was merged with HM Customs and Excise to form HMRC – which is currently government's third-biggest department in headcount terms.
Harra rose through the ranks at HMRC, becoming director of corporation tax and VAT in 2009, director of personal tax customer operations in 2011, and director general responsible for business tax in 2012. He was promoted to second permanent secretary and deputy chief executive of HMRC, effective from 2018 before taking the department's top job in 2019.
Thompson, who served as HMRC' perm sec from 2016 to 2019, said it had been "a great pleasure" to work with Harra.
"I learned a lot from you," he said. "You’ve done a great job and I wish you all the best for the future."
Department offers up to £200k a year for next perm sec
HMRC's just-launched recruitment campaign to find Harra's successor is offering a salary of up to £200,000 a year and Civil Service Pension Scheme employer contributions of 28.97%.
According to the department's latest annual report and accounts, Harra's 2023-24 salary was £195,000-£200,000. He also received a bonus bracketed at £5,000-£10,000.
Cabinet secretary Simon Case – who this week confirmed his impending departure from the civil service – wrote the foreword to the application pack for Harra's successor.
He described the role of HMRC perm sec as "one of the biggest leadership challenges today in the UK", with responsibility for more than 60,000 employees and spearheading the delivery of a wide-ranging transformation programme.
"To succeed in this role you will need a passion for leadership and managing significant cultural change in a complex environment, coupled with the experience of successfully leading major digital programmes to achieve customer service improvements; you will need to be able to lead a department that is transforming on an unprecedented scale," Case wrote.
"We are looking for someone with the ability to engage and develop the leadership team, the credibility to influence senior leaders in other departments, agencies and the department’s wider stakeholder network, and the resilience and focus to lead the department through this period of transformational change."
The brief for the job says candidates should be experts in understanding tax and tax legislation or have "demonstrable experience of working closely with tax professionals".
Among the essential qualities sought by HMRC are experience of leading a large, complex organisation with a UK-wide workforce; experience of reforming an organisation "to deliver clear outcomes consistent with a wider strategy"; experience of leading major digital programmes to transform business processes and customer service; and resilience to work under pressure and scrutiny – and "lead through ambiguity"
The HMRC perm-sec job is open to applications until 11.55pm on October 22.